Marijuana use = bipolar disorder?

The Medical College of Wisconsin will spend the next five years investigating whether the effects of chemicals found in marijuana result in the development of psychiatric disorders.

The study is being funded by a $1.7 million grant from the National Institute of Health’s National Institute on Drug Abuse and will be conducted by pharmacology and toxicology professor Cecilia Hillard.

While most individuals who use marijuana are not adversely affected, some, particularly adolescents, have increased risks of developing serious psychiatric disorders later in life, including schizophrenia-like psychoses and bipolar disorder, according to the Medical College of Wisconsin.

According to Hillard, bipolar patients have a 20 to 40 percent lifetime likelihood for abusing marijuana compared with 6 percent with the general population.

Hillard said there are three explanations for this:

• Bipolar disorder initiates cannabis use;

• Marijuana use precedes the disorder and initiates it;

• There is an “x” factor that causes both bipolar disorder and marijuana use.

“The best evidence out there suggests marijuana use precedes the symptoms of bipolar disorder,” Hillard said.